The Gray Area with Sean Illing

I could describe this podcast, and I will. But the tl;dr is this is one of my favorite conversations so far, and you’re going to enjoy it. So just go listen. Chris Hayes is, of course, the host of the MSNBC primetime show, “All In.” He’s also the author of the new book “Colony in a Nation,” as well as (the extremely prescient) Twilight of the Elites. But beyond the bio, Chris is a crazily smart and insightful thinker on US politics and society, and he's in rare form here. Among our topics:• The way Donald Trump’s success represents both the problems of elite power and elite weaknessWho even counts as an elite, anyway?How people decide what to trustThe difficulties of trying to approach politics with decency and charity in the age of TrumpWhy the key to “law and order politics” isn’t law, but orderThe underestimated power of humiliation in daily American life, and during America’s foundingHow Chris would cover Trump if he were a White House correspondentThe ways in which the media actually can be unfair to TrumpWhy the fight between Trump and the press is more a staged WWE-match than an actual warThe power of seeing politics as a zero-sum competition, even when it isn’t oneAnd much more. This conversation is dense and it’s fast and it’s interesting and it’s fun. Enjoy!Books:“Democracy for Realists,” by Chris Achen and Larry Bartels"Locking up our own,” by James Forman“Racecraft,” by Barbara Fields and Karen Fields"Ghettoside,” by Jill Leovy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I have never come across a mind quite like Tyler Cowen’s. The George Mason economist, and Marginal Revolution blogger, has an interesting opinion on, well, everything. He’s a genuine polymath who can talk knowledgeably about more subjects than I even know exist.So coming in to this interview, I had a simple plan: ask Cowen for his thoughts on as many topics as possible. And I think it worked out pretty well. We discuss everything from New Jersey to high school sports to finding love to smoked trout to nootropics to Thomas Schelling to Ayn Rand to social media to speed reading strategies to happy relationships to the disadvantages of growing up in Manhattan. And believe me when I say that is a small sampling of the topics we cover. We also talk about Tyler’s new book, “The Complacent Class,” which argues, in true Cowenian fashion, that everything we think we know about the present is wrong, and far from being an age of rapid change and constant risk, we have become a cautious, even stagnant, society. This as information dense a discussion as I’ve hosted on this podcast. I took a lot away from it, and I think you will too. Books:-Autobiography of John Stuart Mills-Derek Parfitt’s Reasons and Persons-Fisher Black’s On Business Cycles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You may remember the Atlantic's Molly Ball from the fantastic pre-election conversation we had on this podcast. She's back this week to talk about an issue I've become more and more obsessed with — does factual argument matter in American politics? Or is it just a contest of identity activation?In the most recent Atlantic, Ball profiles Kellyanne Conway, whose television appearances and "alternative facts" offer an unusually clear window into this debate. We talk about that, as well as:- What's surprised us about Trump's presidency so far- How different elections activate different political identities- Fake news, how much it matters, and the ways in which it's rising among liberals- Why presidencies are defined by crises, and what we've learned about how Trump will manage his first- Whether Democrats are completely irrelevant now- How hatred of the other party became a more powerful motivator than belief in your party- Sean Trende's "missing white voters" theory- The low-grade espionage happening all over DC all of the time- Ezra's theory of what really happened between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives- Why Trump's approval numbers are far from disastrousAnd much more. Ball is one of my favorite people to talk politics with, and I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How do you actually run a White House? What is the president’s actual job? What is the chief of staff’s role? What happens if you screw up? These are questions I’ve been reflecting on rather a lot lately, for obvious reasons. And so I asked Denis McDonough on the podcast to talk about them.McDonough served as President Barack Obama’s chief of staff from 2013 to 2017 — a position in which he earned the nickname “Obama’s Obama.” This is his first lengthy interview since leaving the White House, and he was thoughtful, reflective, and sober about both the job he did, and the job his successors must do.This is a discussion about running the most important organization in the world well — and what happens when you fail. McDonough and the Obama administration did have their failures, and those failures taught them hard lessons.This discussion, to me, speaks to a great vulnerability opening up under the Trump White House. They are trying to pursue their agenda, but they are not effectively managing the vast organization they’re in charge of. That’s going to lead to mistakes, and those mistakes could come to define, or even destroy, this administration.Which is why, if there’s anyone who should listen to this podcast, it’s the current occupants of McDonough’s old workplace. This discussion is full of advice that’s useful to anyone running anything big, or anyone interested in how big things are run. I learned a lot from it. You will too. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Before Cecile Richards was president of Planned Parenthood, she was a labor organizer working with garment workers in El Paso, Texas. The experience taught her a key principle of political change: people do things for their reasons, not your reasons.In this conversation, we talk about her organizing background, and how it's informing her work as she tries to protect her the institution she leads. Defunding Planned Parenthood is a core Republican promise. It is also, as she explains, a more punitive policy idea than people realize — there is no Planned Parenthood line in the federal budget, and so defunding the organization means denying it reimbursement for cancer screenings, birth control, and wellness visits. We dig into the possible consequences of that, as well as:-Why the core skill of organizing is listening-How she talks about Planned Parenthood with people who are pro-life-What today’s politicians could learn from her mother, Texas Governor Ann Richards-Why unplanned pregnancy and abortion rates are at post-Roe lows-The reason Planned Parenthood has tried to stop using the terms “pro-life” and “pro-choice”-What’s behind the sharp rise in IUD use-Why she thinks there’d be a very different debate over women’s health if more members of Congress could get pregnant-Which policies she thinks would work to drive down unplanned pregnancy in the US -What she thinks of Neil Gorsuch, Donald Trump’s nominee to the Supreme CourtAnd much more. Also, a quick programming note: we’re accepting applications for Vox’s next unconference, which will be held April 26-27th, and focus on the first 100 days of policy under Trump. Head to https://conversations.vox.com/events/spring-2017/ for more!Books:-Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder-Barbarian Days by William Finnegan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tim Ferriss is the author of the 4-Hour Workweek, as well as the new book, Tools of Titans. He’s also the host of The Tim Ferriss Show, which is one of my favorite podcasts, and an inspiration for this show. Tim is a relentless optimizer, and on his program, he interviews fascinating people to discover how they work, think, and get things done. It’s a show about the secrets of high performers. Here, I ask Tim about basically the reverse of that. How does he think about the parts of his life that, though crucial, are harder to optimize and systematize? We discuss friendship, love, psychedelics, spirituality, death, health, and whether it’s possible to get too addicted to productivity hacks. Amidst all that, we dig into:-Why Tim’s house is filled with reminders of his eventual death-Why he tries to build new friendships atop a foundation of shared suffering-Why he hasn't written a book on romantic relationships and probably won't-How productivity goes bad-How a serious bout of Lyme disease changed how he lives his life-Why some strange experiences on psychedelics convinced him there’s much more to this world than we understand-The difficulty of describing a sneeze-How his interviews have evolved since doing his podcast-What he feels constitutes good adviceOn his own show, Tim is always trying to offer takeaways and lessons about how to live, and he does that here, too. This episode is packed with ideas you can apply to your own life. Books:-David Deida’s The Way of the Superior Man-Frank Luntz’s Words That Work-Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others-Peter Drucker’s The Effective Executive-Sebastian Junger’s Tribe-Oliver Sacks’ Gratitude-Less is More, an anthology on minimalist thinking-Ann Lamont’s Bird by Bird-Frank Herbert’s Dune-The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz-Nikos Kazantzakis’ Zorba the Greek-Josh Waitzkin’s The Art of Learning Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yuval Noah Harari’s first book, “Sapiens,” was an international sensation. The Israeli historian’s mind-bending tour through the trump of Homo sapiens is a favorite of, among others, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Barack Obama. His new book, Homo Deus, is about what comes next for humanity — and the threat our own intelligence and creative capacity poses to our future. And it, too, is fantastically interesting. I’ve wanted to talk to Harari since reading Sapiens. I’ve had one big question about him: what kind of mind creates a book like that? And now I know. A clear one.Virtually everything Harari says in this conversation in fascinating. But what I didn’t expect was how central his consistent practice of vipassana meditation — which includes a 60-day silent retreat each year — is to understanding the works of both history and futurism he produces. We talk about that, and also:-His theory on how all large-scale collaboration is based on fictions, from mythologies and religions to nationalism to human rights-Why he sees money as one of the greatest stories human beings have ever told-Why he reads only 5-10 pages of a huge number of books-His theory that human beings have moved from venerating gods, to venerating themselves, to venerating data — and what that means for our future-How we treat other animals and what that might imply for how artificial intelligences could treat us -Whether wide swaths of human beings will be rendered useless by advances in computing-The ways in which a narrow idea of what intelligence is — and the way it relates to consciousness — is holding us back from understanding AIThis is one of my favorite conversations we’ve had. Enjoy! Books:-Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, & Steel-Frans de Waal’s Chimpanzee Politics-Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Elizabeth Drew is the author of Washington Journal, one of my favorite books about Watergate. Drew covered the story as a reporter for the New Yorker, and the book emerges from the real-time, journalistic diary she kept amidst the chaos. As such, it does something no other Watergate book does: tells the story not as a tidy tale with a clear beginning and inevitable end, but as an experience thick with confusion, rumors, alarm, and half-truths.Of late, I've heard a lot of people comparing the early days of Donald Trump's administration — with the strange scandals around Russia, the fast resignation of Trump's national Security Advisor, and the mounting pressure for investigation — with Watergate. And so I asked Drew, who is now a writer at the New York Review of Books, to provide some perspective on whether that comparison makes sense, and how to think about the Trump scandals that are unfolding, slowly and haltingly, right now.Books:-Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America-Andrew Schlesinger’s The Age of Jackson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Avik Roy advised Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign on health care, ran the policy shop on Rick Perry’s 2016 campaign, and then worked for Marco Rubio after Perry dropped out. So Roy’s Republican credentials are pretty solid. But he’s aghast at the direction his party has taken in recent years. The question Roy asks of conservatives today is a profound one: what is it you’re seeking to conserve? Under Donald Trump, he fears Republicans are fighting to conserve the idea of America as a fundamentally white, Christian country. “Trump showed me that white identity politics was the dominant force driving the Republican grass roots,” Roy told the Atlantic.Roy, who recently founded The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, believes conservatism believes is bigger than that — and in this podcast, he explains why, even as he clearly details the difficulties the movement faces moving beyond white identity politics. We also go deep into healthcare, a subject Roy and I have been arguing about for years. A few other topics we cover:-What he thinks Trumpism represents as a phenomenon-How he feels he’s dealt with his identity as a conservative as opposed to as a Republican-How the aftermath of 9/11 led him to abandon a “colorblind” outlook on race-His hope for a new type of reform within the conservative movement that might result in “diverso-cons”-How the innovator’s dilemma helps explain the GOP’s current problems-Why many conservatives don’t spend much time thinking about healthcare as an issue, and what they could learn from progressives who do-His thoughts on setting price controls for medical procedures and other costs to consumers-Why he thinks AI doctors might change medical practice and costs in the not-too-distant future-His criticism of how people on the left see nonprofit institutions as inherently more beneficial to society than for-profit companies, and the implications that has for healthcare-Whether Republicans are prepared to really offer an Obamacare replacement, and if so, what it might look likeBooks:-Leah Wright Rigueur’s The Loneliness of the Black Republican-Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind-Rationalism & Politics and Other Essays by Michael Oakeshott Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Before I launched this podcast, I asked Kara Swisher to coffee. Swisher founded the technology news site Recode, hosts the excellent Recode Decode podcast, and runs a legendary conference series. She is among the best interviewers working today. Some of her gets — including the first and only dual interview of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates — have passed nearly into myth. I've used the advice Swisher gave me in every episode of this podcast. But in this conversation, she goes further, offering her tips both for interviewing and reporting. If you want to be a journalist, or you just want to talk to people, you should listen to this. Swisher is also an excellent, hilarious storyteller who has lived an incredible, strange life. You really, really don't want to miss the story of how she became part of a sexual harassment lawsuit against John McLaughlin, and why he thanked her for stabbing him "in the front." You also don't want to miss:-The alternative life she might have led as a CIA analyst-Why she thinks journalism school is a waste of time and what she advises people to do instead-The importance of staying in touch with sources when you're not writing about them-Her thoughts on relative friendliness of reporters and sources on politics versus tech beats-Her advice about interviewing -Why she wants to run for mayor of San Francisco, and what she'd want to do as mayor-What aspects of Trump appeal to her-Why she thinks social media’s bad for the world and probably won’t get betterThis is one of the funnest conversations I've had on this podcast, and it's also perhaps the most useful. Enjoy it. Books:-The Woman at the Washington Zoo by Marjorie Williams-Barbarians at the Gate by John Helyar and Bryan Burrough-Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow-Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies-The audiobook of Hilbilly Elegy by JD Vance -Megyn Kelly’s Settle For More-Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal-When Air Becomes Breath by Paul Kalanithi-A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engel-The Time Machine by Jules Verne-Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel-Time and Again by Jack Finney Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Donald Trump's executive order temporarily banning Muslim refugees from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen, and indefinitely banning them from Syria, doesn't come in a vacuum. The world is currently experience the worst refugee crisis since World War II — a crisis that has destabilized the Middle East, torn at the fabric of Europe, and left 65 million people displaced.This is what America is turning its back on. And just because we slam our doors, it doesn't mean the crisis eases. It could get worse, and if it leads to, say, the collapse of Jordan and Turkey, the consequences for America and the rest of the world would be disastrous.David Miliband served as Britain's foreign secretary from 2007 to 2010. He's now President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, which operates humanitarian relief operations in more than 40 countries and has refugee resettlement and assistance programs in 26 United States cities. I asked him on the show to offer a broader perspective than what we're hearing in the US conversation right now. Why is the refugee crisis so bad now? What are the solutions beyond resettlement? What is the vetting process for refugees who come to America, and how have they experienced Trump's order? Who are the world's refugees, and what do they need?What's happening right now is bigger than America. It's imperative we understand it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There are 500,000 elected positions in the United States. I'll say that again: 500,000. And that's no accident. "Our political system is built on the premise that running for office is something that a broad group of citizens should want to do," writes political scientist Jennifer Lawless.But Lawless's research reveals something scary — something that helps explain the political moment we're in. Participating in politics has begun to repulse the average America. 89 percent of high schoolers says they've already decided they will never run for office. 85 percent doubt elected officials want to help people. 79% don’t think politicians are smart or hardworking. And when good, normal people turn away from politics, the system breaks down.Well, be the change you want to see in the world. Lawless is the director of the Women & Politics Institute at American University. Her recent book, along with co-author Richard Fox, is “Running from Office: Why Young Americans Are Turned Off to Politics." Her work, which details why young people and women are increasingly turned off by a political system that badly needs their participation, has never been more essential.This is an inspiring discussion, or at least I think it is. It's about the steps in political participation that come after Facebook posts and even marches. It's about how involving yourself directly in the daily work of politics is both easier and more meaningful than you might think. It's about the myths that keep people — and particularly keep women — from ever considering running for office. It's about recognizing that politics is much more than the presidency and the Congress, and that the opportunities it offers to make the world you live in a bit better are more numerous than you think.Lawless practices what she preaches. She ran for Congress in Rhode Island, and her story of that race, as well as the best advice she got while running it, should not be missed. I hear from a lot of people who feel powerless right now. But they're not powerless. This podcast is for them. Books:-Why We Lost the ERA by Jane Mansbridge-My Life by Bill Clinton-Hard Choices by Hillary Clinton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy has been adopted as the book that explains Trumpism. It's the book that both Senator Mitch McConnell and Senator Rob Portman recommended as their favorite of 2016. It's a book Keith Ellison, the frontrunner to lead the DNC, brought up in our conversation last week. Everyone, on both sides of the aisle, has turned to Vance to explain What It All Means.All of which is a bit odd, because Vance's book is an awkward fit with Trumpism. As Vance describes it, it's about "what goes on in the lives of real people when the industrial economy goes south. It’s about reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible. It’s about a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it." It's a memoir about growing up amidst a particular slice of the white working class — the Scots-Irish who settled in and around Appalachia — and the ways that both propelled Vance forward and held him back. It's a book about one man's story — a story that is universal in some ways, particular in others, but was certainly not written with Donald J. Trump in mind.Vance, today, works for an investment firm founded by Peter Thiel. He's an Iraq veteran and Yale-educated lawyer who fits comfortably among the elites he never expected to know. He's a conservative who doesn't like Trump, but has nevertheless become a favored interpreter for his movement. He's a private person who finds himself having shared the most intimate details of his life with total strangers.We talk about all that, as well as some specific debates that have emerged in the age of Trump, and that speak to issues in Vance's book:- The resentment members of the lower-middle class have towards the non-working poor - The ways in which the discussion over poor white communities has come to mirror the debate over poorer African-American communities- How Trump constructed an "other" that merged both marginalized communities and powerful elites- Slights Vance faced as a member of the military attending elite schools, and how that made him think about the broader debate over political correctness- The difference between "economic anxiety" and "cultural anxiety," and why it matters- How members of Vance's family reconcile their support for Trump with their close friendships with unauthorized immigrants- What he feels defines the values held by elites, and how they differ from those he grew up withAnd, as always, much more. Enjoy. Books:-Robert Putnam’s “Our Kids”-William Julius Wilson’s “The Truly Disadvantaged”-Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart”-Robert Tombs’s “The English and Their History” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Congressman Keith Ellison is the frontrunner to lead the Democratic National Committee in the Trump era. Ellison has a fascinating backstory: he's the first Muslim elected to the US Congress, and he was the second member of Congress to endorse Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign. Now, Sanders has returned the favor, backing Ellison to lead the DNC. But in an unexpected effort to close ranks, Senator Chuck Schumer — who does not exactly come from Sanders's wing of the Democratic Party — has also backed Ellison. Which isn't to say Ellison doesn't face a race. Many in the White House are known to be skeptical of Ellison for this job, and have recruited Tom Perez, the popular Labor Secretary (and previous EK Show guest), to challenge Ellison. The campaign between the two men is increasingly seen as a new front in the Sanders-Clinton fight — but that's a bit absurd. Both are extremely progressive, and neither is actually running for president. Which is why, in this conversation, I wanted to draw Ellison out on his vision for the job of DNC Chair, which is not a role that sets the ideological direction for the Democratic Party. What powers does the DNC chair have? How does Ellison want to use them? What is his philosophy of party organizing? How does a party — as opposed to a candidate — build a relationship with voters? What should the national party apparatus be doing in off-years? How much confrontation should there be with Trump? We get into the weeds of party-building here, and it's obviously a topic Ellison has thought about a lot — both in his own campaigns, and in his run for DNC Chair. The Democratic Party has some hard choices to make in the coming years, and so it's well worth hearing where Ellison wants to push it. Books (so many books!):-Evicted, by Matthew Desmond-Give Us Liberty, by Dick Armey-What a Party, by Terry Mcauliffe-Strangers in Their Own Land, by Arlie Hocschild-Hilbilly Elegy, by JD Vance-Manchild in the Promised Land, by Claude Brown-The Autobiography of Malcolm X-The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabelle Wilkerson-Who Stole The American Dream, by Hendrick Smith-Give Us the Ballot, by Ari Berman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Elizabeth Kolbert covers climate change for the New Yorker. She's the Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction. And she recently wrote a paragraph I can't stop thinking about. "The problem with global warming—and the reason it continues to resist illustration, even as the streets flood and the forests die and the mussels rot on the shores—is that experience is an inadequate guide to what’s going on. The climate operates on a time delay. When carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere, it takes decades—in a technical sense, millennia—for the earth to equilibrate. This summer’s fish kill was a product of warming that had become inevitable twenty or thirty years ago, and the warming that’s being locked in today won’t be fully felt until today’s toddlers reach middle age. In effect, we are living in the climate of the past, but already we’ve determined the climate’s future."Kolbert lives, to an unusual degree, in the planet's future. She travels to the places around the world where the climate of tomorrow is visible today. She has watched glaciers melting, and seen species dying. And she is able to convey both the science and the cost with a rare lucidity. Talking with Kolbert left me with an unnerving thought. We look back on past eras in human history and judge them morally failed. We think of the Spanish Inquisition or the Mongol hordes and believe ourselves civilized, rational, moral in a way our ancestors weren't. But if the science is right, and we do unto our descendants what the data says we are doing to them, we will be judged monsters. And it will be all the worse because we knew what we were doing and we knew how to stop, but we decided it was easier to disbelieve the science or ignore the consequences. Kolbert and I talk about the consequences, but also about what would be necessary to stabilize the climate and back off the mass extinction event that is currently underway. We discuss geoengineering, political will, the environmental cost of meat, and what individuals can and can't do. We talk about Trump's cabinet, about whether technological innovation will save us, and if pricing carbon is enough. We talk about whether hope remains a realistic emotion when it comes to our environmental future.Books:-Edward Abbe’s “Desert Solitaire”-Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”-David G. Haskell’s “The Forest Unseen”-Bill McKibben’s “The End of Nature” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Two weeks before he leaves office, President Obama sits down for a lengthy conversation about the lessons of the Affordable Care Act and the law's uncertain future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At long last, here’s the Ask Ezra Anything episode. You sent in great questions, and I answered as many as I could. To keep me honest — and to make sure I didn’t just talk to myself for two hours — I invited friend-of-the-show Grant Gordon back to the program to help out. We covered a lot of ground. Topics included:- Immortality - The best concerts I’ve been to- Why I think culture is the biggest impediment to a universal basic income- Three lessons this podcast has taught me- Three lessons the 2016 election taught me- Three lessons running Vox has taught me- Why my interview questions are so annoyingly long and rambling- How explanatory reporting differs from other kinds of reporting- The best advice I’ve been given about interviewing- My favorite books- Why the idea that this reality is a computer simulation reflects a failure of imaginationAnd much, much more. Thanks to everyone who sent in questions, and apologies for all the ones we didn’t get to. This was a lot of fun. We’ll definitely do it again soon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From 2012 to 2015, Evelyn Farkas served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia, where she was responsible for policy toward Russia, the Black Sea, the Balkans, and Caucasus regions and conventional arms control.Farkas is now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and I asked her on the show to explain two of the issues that worry me most right now: the horror that has befallen Syria, and the risky belligerence that has overtaken Russia. If this sounds like a tough episode to you, give it a chance. This conversation doesn’t presuppose deep — or really any — knowledge of either conflict. Farkas is clear, thoughtful, and insightful, and at a moment when Syria is destabilizing Europe and Russia is destabilizing the United States, it’s more than worth taking the time to dig into both.Along the way, we talk about Farkas’s time in Bosnia, her frustrations with President Obama’s hands-off approach to the Syria conflict, why she’s sick of “slippery slope” arguments in foreign policy, the ways in which the lessons of Yugoslavia and Bosnia collided with the lessons Iraq and Afghanistan, and what to make of Russia’s hack of the US election.Also, a number of you have asked me to start putting book recommendations in the show notes, so here they are:-David Rhode’s "Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe's Worst Massacre Since World War II” -Peter Pomerantsev’s "Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia” In the days since our interview, I picked up “ Nothing is True,” and Farkas is right: it’s amazing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Columbia law professor Tim Wu makes me feel boring and underaccomplished. He’s been a Supreme Court clerk, a Silicon Valley startup employee, a bestselling author, and a star academic. He coined the term "network neutrality," wrote the superb book The Master Switch, and was dubbed "Genius Wu" by Richard Posner — a man many consider to be our smartest living judge. And this is to say nothing of Wu's award-winning side-gig as a — yes — travel writer.Anyway, screw that guy. Wu's new book is The Attention Merchants, and it's a history of how the advertising business has shaped the information we consume, the products we crave, and the way we think. We talk about that book, but we also talk about Wu's approach to life. He explains why his great strength is his ability to ignore inconsistency, how Larry Lessig shaped his career and his marriage, why working in Silicon Valley left him skeptical of markets, and Marshall McLuhan and Timothy Leary’s advertising jingle for acid (really).We also go deep into antitrust law, the inner workings of the Supreme Court, whether Google and Facebook are monopolies, and what a world without advertising in media might look like. So this conversation covers a lot of ground. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ta-Nehisi Coates is an author at the Atlantic. His book, Between the World and Me, won the National Book Award, and was spoofed on SNL. He's writing the (awesome) Black Panther series for Marvel. He's a certified MacArthur Genius. And he just released a blockbuster story based on hours of interviews with President Obama about the role race played in Obama's upbringing, his presidency, and the 2016 campaign.Coates is also one of my favorite people to talk to, and I think this conversation shows why.The first half of our conversation is political: it's about Coates's conversations with Obama, his impressions of the president, his perspective on American politics, the way his atheism informs his worldview, why he thinks a tragic outlook is important for finding the truth but — at least for nonwhite politicians — a hindrance for winning political power. The second half is much more personal: it's about his frustrations as a writer, his discomfort with the way "Between the World and Me" was adopted by white audiences, how he learns, his surprising advice for young writers, his belief that personal stability enables professional wildness, his past as a blogger, his desire to return to school, his favorite books. I loved this interview. I think you will, too. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Patrick Collison is the 28-year-old CEO of Stripe, the online payments company that was just valued at $9 billion.Haven't heard of Stripe? You've probably used it. Last year, 40 percent of people who bought something online used Stripe's payment systems. The company has become an integral part of the internet's financial plumbing. And Collison has become one of Silicon Valley's leading lights — he made the cover of Forbes last year, where one venture capitalist described him as "the LeBron James of entrepreneurs."Collison is also one of the few people I've met who is a genuine polymath. He seems to know everything about everything, and his recall — particularly his ability to live-footnote his own comments — is something to behold. We talk about how he and his brother conceived of, and launched, Stripe, and then we go much deeper. Among the topics we discussed: -Why there was a market opportunity for Stripe in a world that had PayPal-Why people are often wrong when they look at a market and think an incumbent has dominated it-What he thinks is untrue about the stereotypes of how Silicon Valley handles regulation-How we might be able to tell whether a buildup of regulations are preventing new companies from emerging-Why jobs like home healthcare and childcare are becoming tension points in our national immigration discussion-The difference in the way politicians and tech leaders approach problem-solving-How he tries to shape culture within his company to help it become, in his words, more like itself-What he admires about CEOs like Jeff Bezos and Jim Simons-The culture of "rationalist” bloggers, and why he reads them-How we underestimate the importance of the Enlightenment periodEnjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

José Andrés isn't just a chef. He's a force. All that talk of how DC is now a hot dining scene? Andrés deserves more than a bit of the credit. He's popularized Spanish tapas through Jaleo, brought El Bulli-style molecular gastronomy to America through MiniBar, and racked up some Michelin stars and James Beard awards along the way.Andrés has hosted television shows, taught courses on the science of cooking at Harvard, extended his restaurant empire to Las Vegas and South Beach, set up a nonprofit in Haiti, and launched a fast-casual chain focused on vegetables. He's been named "Man of the Year" by GQ and one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time. I've known Andrés for a couple of years, and I've never met a better storyteller, or seen anyone who thinks harder about the component parts of creativity. We talk about that, as well as:-What Andrés learned from his father-Why the most important job when making paella is tending the fire-Why cooking at home is important but not essential-What he makes of Americans eating out of the house more than ever before-Why we need to be pragmatic about sourcing food-How he applies what he learned in the Spanish navy to his restaurants-What he learned from Ferran Adrià, the founder of molecular gastronomy-How he takes ideas from other disciplines and applies them in his kitchens-How important hiring is to him and why immigration policy is so crucial to the American restaurant business-Why his fast-casual restaurants called Beefsteak are nearly meatless-How he's managed to run an empire while remaining focused on the creative side-What he thinks we might lose by eating synthetic food or soylent-The one dish he thinks people should learn to cookDo you eat? Do you think? Then listen to this. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There are few episodes of this show that people loved as much as my conversation with Heather McGhee, president of the think tank Demos. Our first discussion focused on race, class, populism, and the sometimes toxic ways the three interact. It's a topic I wanted to revisit in the aftermath of Trump's election, and so I asked Heather back to the show. After this conversation, I'm very, very glad I did. Among other things, we discussed:-The three factors that explain the election results-Why race is a more complex force in politics than either liberals or conservatives assume-The dangers of Democrats convincing themselves that populism and racial justice are either/or-Her experience talking with a white man who realized he was prejudiced, and asked her help in changing-Why Clinton lost states Obama won-Why Clinton didn't outperform Obama among nonwhite voters-Why the core of modern racism is seeing some races as made of individuals and others as collectives-Whether the very language around race and racism makes empathy more difficult-How Democrats should think about cooperating — and not cooperating — with TrumpAnd, as always, much more. Heather is brilliant on these topics, and this is worth listening to.Also, a lot of you have asked for an episode where I answer your questions, and we're going to make it happen. So send your questions for me to [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why did Hillary Clinton lose the election? Why did Donald Trump win it? And why was the polling so completely wrong?No one digs deeper into the demographics, polls, and trends of modern American politics than the Atlantic's Ron Brownstein. Though he didn't predict Trump's win, his pre-election writing explained exactly how it could — and eventually did — happen. And it's a more complicated story than you've heard.In the week since the election, much has been made of Trump's strength among white working class voters — and properly so, as they were core to his victory. But the white working class wasn't the primary cause of Clinton's loss. Her real problem were groups that didn't turn out for her in the numbers her campaign expected — college-educated whites, African-Americans, and millennials. And that suggests a very different future for the Democrats. In this conversation, Brownstein goes through the math of the election in detail. We also talk about:-What Clinton’s campaign assumed, wrongly, about winning the middle of the country.-The two quotes that Brownstein thinks explain the entire election-How much James Comey influenced the election’s outcome-Why Trump was able to win the support of voters who thought him unqualified-What might have happened if Democrats had chosen Bernie Sanders as their nominee.-Whether the next Democratic nominee should be focused on winning back working-class whites or energizing the Obama coalition-The worrying signs the Republican Party will see if it compares Trump's win to Reagan's wins-Why Brownstein sees Trump as a political independent candidate who happened to run under the Republican banner (and why Ezra disagrees)-What will be hard and easy for a Trump administration to do while working with a Republican Congress.And much more. There's a lot of confusion about this election. Brownstein is here to clear it up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We’re bringing the Ezra Klein Show to you a little early this week because, well, there's an election coming in a few days. And we wanted to talk about it. The 2016 election is the product of profound failures on the part of different institutions in American life: the Republican Party, the media, the financial system. And few have tracked those failures as clearly, or closely, as David Frum.Frum is Canadian by birth — a perspective, he says, that helps him see American politics as the product of institutions, rather than just personalities. Since moving to the US in the 80s and finding himself inspired by Ronald Reagan, he's chronicled and commentated on conservatism in America. His book, Dead Right, is one of the key documents for understanding the Republican Party of the 1990s. He then did a stint as speechwriter in George W. Bush's White House, where he wrote the famous "Axis of Evil" line in Bush's 2002 State of the Union. More recently, he's written for the Atlantic, where he's been unsparing — and largely proven right — in his assessment of the Republican Party's institutional collapse.This conversation is an exploration of what has happened to the Republican Party — what it was, what it's become, and why. We talk about:-Why journalists need to account for governing institutions before turning to cultural explanations-How he thinks diversity and inequality are linked-How Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump differ-What he learned about inequality while working for the Wall Street Journal editorial page-The best-titled speech Newt Gingrich probably ever gave-His critique of the 1994 Republican Revolution and Newt Gingrich’s consolidation of the Speaker’s power-How Fox News and conservative talk radio echo chamber have harmed the Republican Party-The apocalyptic attitude conservatives rely on while campaigning -Why Trump was so successful running against the Bush family legacy-The role white nationalism plays in Trump's rise (This is an argument I found particularly valuable)-How Canada avoided the nationalist backlash that plagues the US-His best and worst-case scenarios for a Hillary Clinton presidencyEnjoy! And then go vote. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

To understand the 2012 election, you had to ask a political scientist. To understand the 2016 election, you need to call a linguist.At least, I did. Deborah Tannen is a Georgetown University linguist who's done pioneering work in how men and women's communication styles differ. Her book You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, was on the New York Times best seller list for nearly four years, including eight months as number one. But I got to know her earlier this year, as part of a reporting project to understand Hillary Clinton's leadership style, and the ways in which it's lost — and even a liability — on the campaign trail.Tannen's work has helped me understand not just Clinton and Trump's communication styles, but my own — her analysis of how men and women communication at home, and in the workplace, is useful no matter who you are. This episode, more than any other I've done, is full of practical insight into situations we all face daily. Among our topics:-How she became a linguist-Why everyone in her doctoral program was recording the conversations at dinner parties-The ways in which linguistics can solve the same problems as psychology-How cultural attitudes about interruptions and silence lead to miscommunication and frustration (I found this one *very* relevant)-The debate over African-American Vernacular English, and the crucial research that both powered it, and has been forgotten about it -The components of what she calls “conversational style” and how they vary depending on who you are-How gender roles can create conflict within relationships, even just in end-of-the-day check-ins with your partner-Why women are perceived to speak more than men, even when they're speaking less-How gendered forms of communication have changed perceptions of Hillary Clinton-Why she tries to never use the word "sexism" when discussing evaluations of Clinton and other female politicians-How expectations of good leadership are caught up in gendered ideas of what leaders look and sound likeAnd so, so much more. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week’s guest is a Nobel Prize winner. We like to sprinkle those in every so often. Joseph Stiglitz revolutionized how economists understood market failures (hence that prize), served as chief economist at The World Bank, led the Council of Economic Advisers under Bill Clinton, has written more great books and articles than I can count, and now leads The Roosevelt Institute. He's a pretty smart guy. Markets, Stiglitz argues, are man-made, and we need to make them a lot better. We often treat markets as natural phenomena, but they have rules, their rules create some winners and some losers, and, crucially, those rules can be changed. How to change those rules, and which rules to change, is where Stiglitz's recent work has focused — work that is known to have caught the eye of Hillary Clinton — and we talk about it at length, as well as:-Why he became an economist-The nature of the work that won him the Nobel prize-His basic explanation of “information asymmetry,” the term for which he’s probably most famous-His time as the chair of the Council of Economic Advisors-The unintended consequences that can come from rewriting economic rules, even when it's being done with good intentions-Why we can’t use NAFTA to try to understand the Trans-Pacific Partnership-What a good trade deal would look like in this day and age-The difference between Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s economic priorities-Who he’d like to see working at the Treasury Department and on the National Economic Council in the future-What he thinks about a Universal Basic Income-What he learned from the economic failings of Venezuela and GreeceThe arguments you hear in this podcast are very likely to be things a Clinton administration will be thinking about as it tries to craft a post-Obama economic agenda. So there's a lot worth mulling over here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The overwhelming focus of this election has been Donald Trump — the things he does, says, tweets. But the next president is likely to be Hillary Clinton. And we've put a lot less effort into understanding her lengthy, detailed agenda for the country.So I sat down with one of my favorite journalists, The Huffington Post’s Jonathan Cohn, who has been doing that work, to talk through what Clinton's platform actually says, and what it all adds up to. We also discussed:-How the stereotype of her has gone from "radical liberal feminist" to "sell-out conservative Democrat," and what both miss-How childcare, work-life balance issues, and parental leave define Clinton's platform-How racial dynamics have changed since Clinton’s emergence as a national public figure in the 90s-The people who surround Clinton and shape her policy platforms-Jon’s evaluation of how Obamacare’s doing and what about it still needs work-The way geography’s complicating the way Obamacare works by creating so many healthcare marketplaces-Why Obamacare's specific struggles have made it so hard for Republicans to promote their own healthcare plansAll this and more. I hope you enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Francis Fukuyama is a political scientist, a public intellectual, and progenitor of the famed "End of History" thesis. But his recent work is his most important yet. Over two volumes, he's been studying how societies become safe, pluralistic liberal democracies — and then how those advanced democracies descend, and decay, into chaos.Sound familiar?This is a scary conversation that comes at just the right time. We discussed:-How American became a “vetocracy”-Why the representative democracy we have has calcified-Why the internet may be overwhelming our ability for government agencies to deal efficiently with public comment-What he thinks is stoking Trump supporters in the way we talk about diversity and pluralism-Why conversations about class are important-What he thinks about different models of government around the world, especially Denmark’s-How we overcompensate for what we’ve learned through past wars-How polarization is disrupting the way the public views government agencies like the Fed and NOAA-What he's learned from Samuel Huntington, from the Iraq War, and from the Black Lives Matter movement-What an agenda to reverse America's political decay would look likeEnjoy!We want you to tell us about the podcasts you enjoy, and how often you listen to them. So we created a survey that takes just a couple of minutes to complete. If you fill it out, you'll help Panoply to make great podcasts about the things you love. And things you didn’t even know you loved. To fill out the survey, just go to www.megaphone.fm/survey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A number of you have asked that we turn the tables and have someone interview me for the show. So when Tyler Cowen — economist at George Mason University, blogger at Marginal Revolution, and generalized genius — invited me on his podcast Conversations with Tyler, I said yes, and asked if we could post the discussion here, too. Tyler — whose podcast you should listen to — asks some of the hardest, strangest, most provocative questions of anyone I know, and so this was a lot of fun. Among the topics we discussed:-What we do now that we will reflect on as kind of crazy or unethical in the next few decades-How my video team at Vox has taught me to think about visual stories-The value of making content that’s made to be re-discovered-Why identity as a driver of virality is important to the current online media landscape-The ethics of eating meat, and why I think those attitudes will change fast in the coming decades-My thoughts on how CEOs work and how the job of being a CEO has become its own profession-What I think I’m good at in leading Vox, and how I try to support my team in fostering the things they do-The importance of to-do lists-My biggest talent-spotting tip-Why the government doing clunky, difficult things is sometimes good-How you shouldn’t probably trust my taste in culture, like sports or music-The role of shame in the mediaAll this and so much more on this week’s episode. I hope you all enjoy.Panoply SurveyWe want you to tell us about the podcasts you enjoy, and how often you listen to them. So we created a survey that takes just a couple of minutes to complete. If you fill it out, you'll help Panoply to make great podcasts about the things you love. And things you didn’t even know you loved. To fill out the survey, just go to www.megaphone.fm/survey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This election season has left pretty much everything I thought I knew about politics in doubt. Both parties nominated unpopular candidates, even when they had popular alternatives. One party's nominee isn't really running any ads, and has barely bothered to build a field operation. The same party's nominee says things on a regular basis that would've been — or would've been thought to be — disqualifying in any other year. So it's been weird.One of the best chroniclers of that weirdness has been the Atlantic's Molly Ball. In the latest edition of the magazine, she has a fantastic piece looking at whether Trump's candidacy is proving that most of what's done by campaigns — the ads, the microtargeting, the message-crafting, etc — is just a waste of money. We talk about that, as well as:-Whether there's actually a floor in American politics — if even Trump is remaining competitive, does that mean basically anyone can get 45 percent of the vote?-How Hillary Clinton’s experience within the political system has come hurt her in some ways-Whether we've been fooling ourselves by thinking elections are about policy rather than identity -The difference between Pat Buchanan in the 90s and Trump now-Why some voters are rooting for Trump even if they’re not always screwed by the economy in the way you might think -How current demographic trends are bearing out the anxieties of older white men-What might come after Trump for the GOP, and whether a candidate like him could be replicated in other races-Why high-information voters, especially educated Republican women, are often still undecided-What the liberalism of millennials coupled with the unpopularity of the major parties means for the future of politics in the US-Why Hillary Clinton has so much trouble ginning up enthusiasm among her base-What Molly's learned about human nature after doing a ton of reporting on this presidential campaign cycleThis really is the best conversation I’ve had with anyone about the election yet. Enjoy!We want you to tell us about the podcasts you enjoy, and how often you listen to them. So we created a survey that takes just a couple of minutes to complete. If you fill it out, you'll help Panoply to make great podcasts about the things you love. And things you didn’t even know you loved. To fill out the survey, just go to www.megaphone.fm/survey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, I've turned over the mic to The Weeds' Sarah Kliff. She went to Capitol Hill to interview HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell about all things healthcare. They talked about how to pay doctors to provide better care, the current state of the Obamacare marketplaces, and what she's learned about management running the federal government's largest agency. I hope you enjoy this, and I'll be back next week! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There are a couple of ideas that drive how I see policy and politics. One of them is that most of what drives health outcomes has nothing to do with what happens in doctor's offices. Another is that we overestimate the importance of the president national politics and underestimate the important of city officials and local politics.Dr. Leana Wen — and this episode — stands at the intersection of those two ideas.Wen is the Baltimore City Health Commissioner — a job she got when she was only 31, after a stint as an ER doctor, and a background as a Rhodes Scholar and medical activist. Her work in Baltimore coincided with the aftermath of Freddy Gray's killing, a brutal opioid epidemic, and a renewed focus on urban health disparities (there are counties in Baltimore that have higher infant mortality than the West Bank).In this conversation, we talk about all that and more. Here's some of the more:-Why her family moved to Utah after leaving China after the Tiananmen Square protests-Whether America's culture of sharing problems and working through pain is actually healthy-How she learned to deal with a serious speech impediment (and how I did)-What it was like growing up in Compton in the early 90s-How Bill Clinton’s autobiography changed her life-What motivated her to become a doctor-How she squares her idea of herself as an activist with being a government official-The unexpected process by which you get a job like Baltimore City Health Commissioner-How the medical community’s understanding of pain has changed, and how that led to the opioid crisis-The misunderstandings of outdated ideas that have made the opioid crisis so much worse-Why she prescribed a drug to treat heroin overdoses to everyone — yes, everyone — in Baltimore-Her thoughts on the paradox of Baltimore’s great health institutions and its huge health disparities-What disturbs her about the patterns that lead up to infant mortalityI particularly want to call out Wen's discussion of the opioid crisis, and what needs to be done about it. It's one of the clearest and most impassioned tours through that epidemic I've heard, and it's worth listening to this conversation just for that. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I’ve been reading sociologist Arlie Hochschild’s writing for about a decade now. Her immersive projects have revolutionized how we understand labor, gender equity, and work-life balance. But her latest book, Strangers In Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, is something new: she spent five years among tea party supporters in Louisiana, trying to bridge the deepest divide in American politics. It was, she says, an effort to scale the "empathy wall," to create an understanding of how politics feels to people whose experiences felt alien to her. In this conversation, we discuss:-How she approaches immersive sociology-The kinds of questions she asks people in order to get them to open up about their political feelings-What it takes to “turn off your alarm system” when you encounter oppositional ideas-What she describes as the “deep story” that explains how conservative Americans, particularly older white men, feel increasingly looked down on-Why she feels empathy on the part of people who disagree is an important part of creating dialogue-Whether empathy and respect are in tension with each other-Why many white men don't feel they're part of a privileged group-What she thought of Clinton's comments that half of Trump's supporters are a "basket of deplorables"And much more. This is a time when listening and empathy are in shorter supply than ever, at least in American politics. It's well worth listening to Hochschild's advice on how to bring both back. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you came by the Vox office, you would find it oddly quiet. That's not because we don't like each other, or because we're not social, or because we don't have anything to say. It's because almost all our communication happens silently, digitally, in Slack.Slack is Stewart Butterfield's creation, and it's the fastest-growing piece on enterprise software in history. But here's the kicker: he didn't mean to create it, just like he didn't mean to create Flickr before it. In both cases, Butterfield was trying to create a new kind of game: immersive, endless, and focused on experiences rather than victories. The story of Butterfield's pivots from the game to Flickr and Slack have become Silicon Valley lore. But in this conversation, we go deep into the part that's always fascinated me: the game Butterfield wanted to create, the reasons he thinks gaming is so important, and the ways in which his philosophy background informs his current work. We also talk a lot about the nature of status, identity, and communication in online spaces, as Butterfield's company is now revolutionizing all three.This is a deep, interesting, and unusual conversation — we went places I didn't expect, and I left thinking about topics I'd never really considered. Butterfield is as thoughtful as they come, and I hope you get as much out of this as I did. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

W. Kamau Bell is a comedian and a writer. But you probably know him from one of his podcasts(Denzel Washington Is The Greatest Actor Of All Time Period and Politically Re-Active) or his CNN show The United Shades of America.In this conversation, Bell and I go wide. We begin with an inquiry into the nature of health food, transition into a discussion of how future historians will view our present (and, particularly, a discussion of which stories we're ignoring that they'll see as central), move into the lessons Bell has learned from parenthood and fame, dig into his decision to move to Northern California from New York, examine his path to comedy, talk through the opportunities presented by podcasting, and more. There's also a damn good Eddie Murphy story in here.Here's how good this conversation is: I spoke with Bell just a few days after getting my wisdom teeth out, and I still had a great time. You will too. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Malcolm Gladwell needs no introduction (though if you didn't know the famed author has launched a podcast, you should — it's called Revisionist History, and it's great.).Gladwell's work has become so iconic, so known, that it's become easy to take it for granted. But Gladwell is perhaps the greatest contrarian journalist of his generation — he looks at things you've seen before, comes to conclusions that are often the opposite of the conventional wisdom, and then leaves you wondering how you could ever have missed what he saw. To see something new in something old is a talent, it's a process, and it's what we discuss, in a dozen different ways, in this episode. Among the topics we tackle:-How Gladwell got started at the Washington Post after being fired from another job for waking up late-Gladwell’s high school zine based on personal attacks and Bill Buckley-How Canadians are disinclined to escalate conflicts-The value and nature of boredom in childhood-How people reflexively pile on to convenient narratives -How the economics of media might be influencing its current tone-Why pickup trucks today are so much larger than they used to be-His insights about the current identity of journalists as a culture-Why podcasting is different from writing for the page/screen-Why talking about numbers can be difficult in audio-How the internet will one day seem like an experiment gone completely awry-Why you shouldn’t have satellite radio in your car-Whether more individualized education is a a good idea-The importance of people who are above average though not exceptionalThis is a fun conversation, but it's also a useful one. It's hard to look at something that is believed to be understood and realize it's been misunderstood. Hell, it's hard to look at something that is believed to be understood and take seriously the idea that it might have been misunderstood. This is Gladwell's great skill — it is the product of both a process and an outlook, and it's worth hearing how he does it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Grant Gordon is a political scientist and policymaker who specializes in humanitarian intervention. He’s a fellow at the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation, and has worked on humanitarian and development policy for the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations, the UN Office of Humanitarian Coordination, the UN Refugee Agency, as well as the Rwandan Government, Open Society Justice Initiative and other organizations. All of that is a long way of saying he works on the some of the world's worst problems and conflicts, and tries to figure out which interventions will actually help. He’s embedded with the Congolese military to try to understand why soldiers attack citizens, he's used satellites to monitor and deter genocidal violence in Darfur, and he's studied the ways in which peacekeepers can win hearts and minds with local communities in Haiti. And over and over again, he's found that good intentions do not always make good policies. It's a valuable lesson — and Grant is a valuable voice — for anyone who thinks seriously about policymaking. Grant is also a good friend whose work has long fascinated me, and so it was great to get a chance to interrogate him on it for two hours. Among other things, we covered:- How to read academic literature efficiently- Grant’s path from being a kid in California to working in the Rwandan health ministry to hiding under cars in Congo- What his whiteness and Jewish heritage means in his work on humanitarian policy- How the politics around humanitarian intervention have changed since the 90s- How and why he got an internship, as a college student, in the Rwandan health ministry by cold emailing Rwanda's health minister- How randomized controlled trials do and don’t help humanitarian work- Why it's actually difficult for a fragile society to build an army strong enough to protect its citizens but not so strong it overthrows the government- How to care for yourself when you work in and out of conflict-torn placesAnd much more. Towards the end of the interview, Grant turns the tables and questions me for a bit, so keep an ear out for that. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I first started working with Melissa Bell at the Washington Post. I was trying to launch a new product — Wonkblog — and I needed some design work done. Melissa wasn't a designer. She wasn't a coder. She didn't manage designers or coders. She was, rather, a blogger, like me. But somehow, no one would meet with me to talk Wonkblog unless Melissa was also in the room.It was my first exposure to Melissa's unusual talent for finding and connecting the different parts of a modern newsroom. We went on to start Vox together, and it's no exaggeration to say Vox simply wouldn't exist without Melissa's vision, her managerial brilliance, or her unerring sense of where journalism is going. She's also one of my very favorite people — working with her has been one of the highlights of my career. Melissa was recently named publisher for all of Vox Media — so if you're wondering what's next in journalism, she's someone you'll want to listen to, because she'll be building it. In this conversation, we discuss:-How Melissa started her journalism career in India-Her experience working near the World Trade Center on 9/11-What she learned from her time as a waitress, and how it was crucial to her development as a journalist-Her pending case before the Indian Supreme Court-How observing large institutions reveals how little information and control any one person really has-How she thinks about “mapping out” organizations and creating informal networks within those organizations to get things done-Why it’s hard to create new things in big organizations and how to create better systems for making those things-How the distinctions between "old" and "new" media have largely collapsed-What it was like starting Vox, and what we got wrong from the beginning-How Vox's brand identity emerged, and why it proved more important than either of us expectedAnd much more. I work very closely with Melissa, and I learned a lot about her in this discussion. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I've wanted to do this interview for a long, long time.Atul Gawande is a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He's a professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health. He is executive director of Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation, and chairman of Lifebox, a nonprofit organization making surgery safer globally. He's a New Yorker writer. He's the author of some of my favorite books, including Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance and The Checklist Manifesto. He's a MacArthur Genius. Atul Gawande makes me feel like a slow, boring, unproductive person. What makes it worse is that he's a helluva nice guy, too. And he knows more new music than I do. There haven't been many conversations on this podcast I've looked forward to more, or enjoyed as much. Among many other things, we talked about:- How Atul makes time to do all of the writing, large-scale research, and surgery he does- His time working in Congress and in the White House- His writing process and how it’s evolved since his early days writing for Slate- Why he hates writing and likes being edited (and why I am the exact opposite)- His thoughts on ignorance, ineptitude, why we fail at things, and what hand washing has to do with it- How effective Medicaid coverage is in improving health outcomes- The ways we need to more effectively deliver existing knowledge and technology rather than always focusing on the next big discovery- What he thinks we’ve learned so far from Obamacare- How Rivers Cuomo from Weezer has applied lessons from Atul’s writing to his music- His work with the Clintons, Jim Cooper, and Al Gore and thoughts on their private versus public personas- How all the different parts of his life — the writing, the surgery, the policy work — come together into one single engine for actually making change- What new albums he thinks everyone should listen toAnd so much more. Talking to Atul was a real pleasure. I hope you enjoy it too. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is a serious conversation with a very funny man.Trevor Noah is the host of Comedy Central's the Daily Show. He's also a stand-up comic who grew up in apartheid South Africa, the son of a black mother and a white father. That was illegal in apartheid-era South Africa, so Noah grew up hiding his real parentage, only seeing his father in carefully controlled circumstances. Somehow, he managed to turn this into a very funny, very incisive stand-up act. Today, he occupies one of the commanding heights of American comedy, and when you talk to him, you can see why: he's funny, but he's also damn smart, with an outsider's perspective on America's very unique problems. In this conversation, we talk about:- What it was like growing up biracial in apartheid South Africa- Noah's experience watching South Africa’s post-apartheid truth and reconciliation commission, and what an American one might look like- Noah's thoughts on the right to be forgotten on the internet- How Donald Trump's superpower is his lack of shame- The ways in which Obama’s presidency changed – and sometimes inflamed — the conversation about race over the last eight years- What Obama does and doesn’t share with other Black celebrities in “transcending” race- The parallels between experiencing catcalling and experiencing racism- Noah's critique of both "objective" news sources, and biased ones- Why Noah was taken aback by the response he got criticizing Bernie Sanders- Noah's news diet, and why he doesn’t watch as much Fox News as you might think- How Noah develops a joke, from start to finishAnd much more. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yuval Levin has been called "the most influential conservative intellectual of the Obama era," and the moniker fits. As editor of National Affairs — in my opinion, the best policy journal going on the right — he's been at the head of the "reformicon" movement, and his work has had a heavy influence on top Republicans like Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio. If you had asked me a year ago to name the conservatives likely to set the agenda for the Republican Party in 2016 and beyond, Levin would've been atop my list. And then, of course, Donald Trump won the Republican nomination.In this atmosphere, Levin's new book, Fractured America, reads like a warning. Written before "Make America Great Again" became the rallying cry of the Republican Party, it argues that both Democrats and Republicans were trapped inside a dangerous nostalgia, and tried to propose a way out. We talk about that way out in this podcast, as well as:- How Levin defines the Republican Party, and how he thinks it’s changed with Trump- Why Republicans misunderstand their own voters- His distinction between the conservative movement and the Republican party- Why he views Brexit and Trump’s rise as a kind of “counter-cosmopolitanism” - The role of nostalgia in our current politics- Why a universal basic income is the most interesting idea on the left today- How the free market undermines cultural traditionalism- The way in which we have cultural/moral arguments under the guise of debates about how efficient/effective policies are- What Levin learned working for Newt Gingrich and George W. Bush- Why you’d have to be crazy to want to be presidentIf you want to understand the Republican Party today, you should listen to this interview. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

My interview this week is with Hillary Clinton. You may have heard of her.I won't bore you with Clinton's bio. Instead, I want to say a few words about what this interview is, as it's a bit different than the EK Show's normal fare (though I do ask her for book recommendations!).I got about 40 minutes with Hillary Clinton. I wanted to use that time to try to answer a question I've had about Clinton for years: why is the candidate I see on the campaign trail so different from the person described to me by her staff, colleagues, friends, and even foes? I wanted, in other words, to try to see what Clinton is like when she's working her way through policy and governance issues. And so that's what we talk about. Among the topics we covered are:- Extreme poverty, welfare reform, and the working poor- Is it time for more deficit spending?- Would more immigration be good for the economy?- The difficulties of free college and universal health care- What skills does a president need that campaigns don't test?- What's on her bookshelf?- Why America stopped trusting elites — and what elites should do about itIf you want more on this discussion, I also reported out a long piece on how Clinton governs — you can find it on Vox.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Not long ago, I had the chance to eat a burger from a company called Impossible Foods. The burger was delicious. It was juicy, savory, and bloody. Oh, and it was made from plants.Yes, they've created a veggie burger that bleeds. Patrick Brown is the CEO and Founder of Impossible Foods. His company is the Tesla of plant-based meat: they are trying to create a burger that carnivores will prefer to the thing cut from the side of the cow. And they've got some big backers in that effort: Brown has hundreds of millions of dollars from investors including Bill Gates and Google.I sat down with Brown, a biochemist, to talk about the science and business of Impossible Foods. Among other things, we discussed:- Why meat tastes like meat- How to find the flavor of blood in plants - The ways in which the company is mimicking Tesla's strategy for electric cars- The environmental impact of meat, and how plant-based burgers compare- What happens when you break down the individual flavors of your favorite foods- What it means for a food to be "natural"- Why the market for plant-based proteins hasn't developed many premium productsAnd much more. This episode is interesting even if you love your animal protein and will never, ever give it up: we're really talking here about the science of flavor, the business of food, and whether you can combine technology and marketing to change the most entrenched consumer behaviors of all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Heather McGhee is the president of the think tank Demos, and one of the most interesting thinkers today on the intersection of racism and economic inequality.Among Heather's most interesting arguments is her belief that "the left will have to challenge its own orthodoxy that defines racism as something that wholly benefits whites and solely victimizes people of color." In this podcast, she explains why. We also talk about:- Why Heather, an African-American woman, worked for John Edwards rather than Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton in 2008- The lame presidency of The West Wing's Josiah Bartlet- Whether the wealthy are actually able to buy the political outcomes they want (spoiler: I'm skeptical)- How racism has been used as a tool to discredit government action- Whether Barack Obama's presidency has led to more racial division in AmericaAnd much more. This is a fascinating conversation about some genuinely tricky topics. It's left me with a lot to think about, and I believe it'll do the same for you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

My guest on this episode is Jesse Eisenberg — who you may know as Lex Luthor in Batman V. Superman, Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, or Daniel Atlas in the just-released Now You See Me 2.I was apprehensive about this interview. I haven't interviewed many movie stars. But this turned out to be one of the most natural, easy, and interesting conversations I've had for the show. Eisenberg is a cerebral Jewish writer who sees the world through the lens of sociolology and has a lot of trouble relaxing. So we had a lot to talk about, including:- Jewish humor and the dangers of assimilation- How it's different to write for the page than the stage- Whether Eisenberg has become happier as he's become more successful- What he learned backpacking through China- Why his family never takes vacations- How he turns the tables on fans who stop him in the street- Why he thinks it's easier to ask extremely personal questions of total strangers, and why it's worth doing- How his training as an actor helps him understand Donald TrumpAnd much more. So, so much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jessica Valenti is the founder of Feministing, a columnist at the Guardian, and the author of the new book "Sex Object." She's also a friend from the early days of blogging. In this podcast, we talk about the early days of blogging, as well as how the internet has changed as the conversation has moved from comment sections to the social web. Jessica's insight here — that in comment sections, trolling was something you did, while on Twitter, a troll is something you are — is powerful, and I've been thinking about it since our conversation. We also talk about:- How feminism was different when Jessica started her blog- How she sees the fights over trigger warnings and political correctness- What it's like to write a book where you reveal some of your deepest secrets to the whole world- The advice Jessica wishes she was given at 15- Whether perceptions of Hillary Clinton are influenced by sexism- Why she rereads the same few books over and overAnd, as always, there's much more. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Moby's new memoir, Porcelain, is a great read for policy wonks. Really.It's less a history of music than a history of New York in the 80s and 90s, and a reflection on how density, crime, racial and sexual marginalization, and lax zoning policy created the conditions for an explosion of creativity. No one would want to recreate those conditions today. But as a non-New Yorker, Moby has written one of the only tracts I've seen that helps explain why so many are nostalgic for that era in NYC history. Moby is, more broadly, a smart, thoughtful guy with a lot to say about art, science fiction, and animal rights. And his story carries a lot of hope for anyone trying to make it in a creative profession today: it's amazing how little he needed to get started in music, and as he explains, even less is needed now. If you're an aspiring artist, Moby's argument is definitely worth hearing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tom Perez is President Obama's Secretary of Labor. He is also, according to the New York Times, on Hillary Clinton's shortlist for the vice presidency.I spoke with Perez about his path to the Labor Department, the powers of the Secretary of Labor, the push for a $15 minimum wage, the future of unions, a universal basic income, and much more. Perez sees his role as pushing a new contract between the government, employers, and workers, and in this episode, we delve deep into that vision.This is a policy-heavy conversation with arguably the most activist member of Obama's cabinet, and a leader who may be central to the next presidential administration, too. I think you'll enjoy it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Last year, Andrew Sullivan quit blogging — the medium he had done so much to create. And you know what? He was pretty damn happy about it. He was taking walks, meditating, exercising, reading, and generally living the good life. Of course, then Donald Trump just had to go and drag him back into the fray...In this extremely, extremely fun conversation, I talked with Andrew about:- His 10-day silent meditation retreat- His central role pushing gay marriage from a fringe idea to a constitutional right- What it was like being an HIV-positive writer during the height of the plague, and how the experience deepened his faith- Why he believes in God- Whether you can build a media business based off of advertising- How his thinking on Obama has changed since 2008- What he thinks is so unusually dangerous about Donald Trump- Why a politics based on how people feel scares himAnd much more. This is one of the most fun conversations I've had for this show. I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices